“What’s the hurry?” Becky asked. Then, to Yelena, “Sorry, but an extra few hours to get it right might be worth the delay.”
Jonathan shook his head. “No. We know where the PCs are headed now. We don’t know where they might be moved later. If they get whisked off again, we’ll be out of business. The clock is definitely ticking.”
“Not all roads are monitored,” Boxers said.
“Yeah, they are,” Jonathan corrected. “There might not be checkpoints, but there are ground sensors and drones in the air.” He smiled at Irene, who seemed surprised that he knew about the drones. “It’s not worth the risk to drive. Plus, that’s a twelve-hour commute from here.”
“We can always charter a jet,” Boxers said, “but there’s still the problem of customs.”
Jonathan never quite understood why it was so much harder to get in and out of Canada that it was to traverse the Mexican border, but he figured it had something to the relative strengths of the two nations’ respective lobbyists. Fact was, the border was carefully watched, and the penalties for illegal crossings were huge. At a minimum, it included impounding the vehicle that carried you, and in Jonathan’s case, given all the weaponry that his vehicle would be transporting, that would be especially problematic.
Given the time constraints, they needed a way to literally pass under the radar between the two nations, but that would mean treetop flying, and that attracted a lot of attention. Unless, of course, they could start and end in relatively unpopulated areas.
In a perfect world, they’d use a helicopter. Working the logic, then, they needed a helpful contact in New England, close enough to make the flight out and back on a single tank of gas.
Vermont, maybe.
That’s it!
When he looked to Boxers, the Big Guy was already grinning.
They said it together: “Striker.”
Len Shaw, a.k.a. Alexei Petrov, arrived in his office to find Dmitri Boykin already seated in Len’s chair, with his feet on the desk, paging through paperwork that he had no right seeing. “Excuse me,” Len said.
Dmitri looked bored and slightly amused. He started to speak in Russian.
“No,” Len said. “Not here. English. French if you must, but I do not allow Russian in my compound.”
Dmitri’s eyebrows raised halfway up his forehead. “You do not allow? Comrade Petrov, tell me you are not ashamed of your heritage.”
“Those days are gone, Dmitri. Comrade this and comrade that, you sound like an old movie. You must embrace change. And the first change is to get out of my chair.”
Dmitri didn’t move. He was a bully in the most basic definition of the word. Built like a fire hydrant, he had a face that had survived too many fights, and the personality of a man who longed for more. While he intimidated most of the men with whom he interacted, Len was not among them.
“Are you going to make me?” he asked.
It was a level of discourse to which Len would not stoop. If it came to that, so be it. The odds in the ensuing fight would be even at best — and in Dmitri’s favor, at worst — but there’d be a lot of blood on the walls, and no one would want that.
Dmitri held his posture for a few seconds — long enough to impress Len with his faux fearlessness — and then lowered his feet to the floor and stood. “You are getting bold in your old age, Alexei.”
Len waited until he had clear passage — avoiding the temptation of the schoolyard shoulder-knock and the unspoken challenge it brought — before walking behind his desk and sitting down. “The name is Len. Len Shaw. And I am a real estate developer. That is the life I lead, mission notwithstanding. The men who live here are construction workers. The public is not welcome because a construction site is a dangerous place. That is our cover, and our cover is working.”
“You seem to have taken deep ownership of a property I bought.”
“It’s a property that I bought,” Len snapped. “Check the land records.”
“What is it that the Americans like to say?” Dmitri asked. “Ah, yes. Follow the money.”
Len sighed. “Must we engage in this — what else is it that the Americans say? Ah, yes. Must we engage in this dick-knocking? We are on the same side, Dmitri. We have known each other too long for this. We are too close to our mission’s end. Nineteen eighty-eight was a long time ago.” He was referring, of course, to the fall of the Soviet Union.
“The Mishins are on their way,” Dmitri said, getting right to the point. “They should be here in the next few hours.”
Len had taken special care to shower, shave, and fully dress before responding to Dmitri’s summons at this ridiculous hour. He wore creased blue jeans and a crisply ironed white shirt. On his right hip he carried a Glock 23, a .40 with which he could hammer nails at twenty-five yards. He was not pleased to find out that he would be harboring high-profile hostages. As any senior leader of Al Qaeda could tell you — if you could raise them from the dead — few terrorists (and that’s exactly what the Americans would consider Dmitri to be) died of old age.
“I’ve made my opinion known on the risk of this,” Len said.
“Yes, you have.”
“It is madness to risk all of the progress we have made on something so personal. To involve the president’s family—”
“It is the bitch’s family, not his.”
“That’s not how the American people will see it. They will see an attack on the first family, and they will react with violence. Everything you’ve worked for will be jeopardized.”
“Everything I have worked for will be guaranteed,” Dmitri said. He’d settled himself into the cane-backed guest chair in front of Len’s desk. “I have told that fool Winters that if word ever leaks out, I will simply kill the hostages and move on. Just as I told him that I would take them in the first place if our operation became jeopardized.”
Len understood that actions had to have consequences, that once a promise was made, it had to be fulfilled. He didn’t argue with any of that. His difficulty with the current arrangement was the danger that came from mixing the missions. Saint Stephen’s was first and foremost a weapons repository. In that light alone, it was a huge target, in recognition of which they’d gone so far as to prohibit incoming and outgoing phone calls. No one was to know what transpired within the twelve-foot walls of the compound. Shipments arrived at night, mostly by boat. Only a select few among the cadre knew the nature of the materials stored in the chapel, and none of them knew more than was necessary for them to do their jobs.
Now, in addition to those responsibilities, they would also become jailers. With the added duties came added risk. The Americans would move heaven and the stars to find the spawn of Yelena. To find them was to find everything. If their search brought them to Saint Stephen’s the whole mission would be finished.
“Are you aware that we have not heard anything from Vasily or Pyotr?” Len asked.
“I’m sure they’re fine,” Dmitri said.
“Why would you be sure of that?” As he spoke, Len opened the top left-hand drawer of his desk and withdrew a Cohiba Espléndidos cigar and a cutter. “I’ve been monitoring the US news outlets, and there has been no word of a reporter being killed.”
Dmitri pulled a silver cigarette case from the inside pocket of his suit coat. Dmitri always wore a suit. Always dark, always at least ten years out of date. As if in competition with Len, when the spring-loaded case opened, it revealed two complete rows of black Sobra-nies. “They no longer allow smoking in America,” he said. “It’s a law that makes for very long days.”
“But much healthier fat Americans,” Len said with a smile. He allowed the light moment to glow for a few seconds, and then returned the discussion to that which could kill them all. “They should have called in by now. One of them or both of them. The fact that we’ve heard from neither is of great concern. Nor have we heard that their targets were killed. I think they may have been compromised.”